


A blossom's grief

by Arzani



Series: what is left [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: A lot of comfort, Angst, Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Just a little bit of Angst, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9827777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arzani/pseuds/Arzani
Summary: She had mourned, as it was expected of the former Lord Governor of the Carolina Colonies’ daughter Miss Abigail Ashe. Her tears had felt real, and she knew they held a certain amount of truth. But most of all she had shed those salty pearls because of the twisted fate that had brought back Captain Flint to the living while her father had to die.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Forget 04x04. I wrote this before I watched the season and/or spoilers. As we don't know it's gonna continue, I go with my fav OT3. FITE ME.
> 
> Also I just assumed the time gap between treasure island and Black Sails to be around ten years. We don't really know, do we?
> 
> Oh and I am no native english speaker, excuse my mistakes...

_Dong_

The tune sounded through the room hollowly, like a church bell would for a funeral. Again and again, in a steady rhythm. Her steady rhythm, alike to the still drumming heart of hers, unable to stop pulsing life through her veins.

_Dong_

Light was flittering through the dirty windows, visible due to the dust in the air. It was a testimony to the lack of female company in this house. A lack of love and caring. Maybe it was what had made her father hard…

_Dong_

She could hear his footsteps outside, waltzing in and disturbing her rhythm, so carefully attached to her sanity since a single shot had destroyed everything she had believed in. Affection. Benevolence. Pardon. Hope.

_Dong_

Dead eyes still stared at her. The blood running down her forehead. A scream. Her own scream. But worse had been his silence. The utter shock and those empty green eyes. There had been her scream and her father’s assertions that he had not wanted this to happen. But it had been his silence that stuck and it haunted her. Would always haunt her.

_Dong_

The door opened, scraped across the wooden floor. The sound was horrible and too loud in her ears. Yet it didn’t drown out the silence. Never would.

_Dong_

They would hang him. Tomorrow. Hang the man that had saved her life. After they had shot the woman who had saved her life. For words against her father. She remembered each word she had been able to hear. Would never get rid of them, forever stuck to her memory. None of them made sense.

_Dong_

“Stops this,” he said and took hold of her hand, and she looked at him. Truly looked at him.

When Abigail Ashe looked at her father, she couldn’t hold back her words. She filled the silence that Captain Flint had left with her own ice cold view on the truth.  That not the pirate was to be the monster in this case. But society never cared.

She’d been sent away not even the next day.

_Dong_

* * *

__

They had brought her news about Charlestown’s burning a few weeks later. News only carried as fast as ships, and ships were in danger of attacks these days. One name ever present to the raids: Captain Flint.

She had mourned, as it was expected of the former Lord Governor of the Carolina Colonies’ daughter Miss Abigail Ashe. Her tears had felt real, and she knew they held a certain amount of truth. But most of all she had shed those salty pearls because of the twisted fate that had brought back Captain Flint to the living while her father had to die. She didn’t give in to illusions. There was a certainty in her like the ever-rocking tide that her father had died by the hand of Captain Flint. Hands both able to save, protect and cherish and to destroy, burn and murder.

_I want this whole city to burn._

It was also a certainty that Captain Flint had fulfilled her last wish. And Abigail just couldn’t find it in her to blame him for it.

* * *

“Do you really need to go?”

Not only green eyes gazed over his face, yet those were the ones holding him captive. Even after more than a decade with this man, he still couldn’t resist when he was looked at like this. He assumed he never would. It made him sigh pained.

“Yes, love, didn’t we talk about this? There is no good in rising any suspicions about Captain Flint being anything but dead.”

John Silver meant what he said, yet there was a small whispering voice in the back of his head that sounded too much like Long John telling him he also wouldn’t let those filthy bastards lay hand on their treasure. Not, when all his former crewmates did was laughing about the shabby way of how Captain Flint had drunk himself to death in Savannah. Even though it was his own story they told. His biggest lie.

Another sigh escaped his lips. Those few remaining wrecks that claimed themselves the title of former pirates under Captain Flint weren’t those men he had treasured so much during his time as a quartermaster on the Walrus. They weren’t the men that had formed him, allowed him to see further than his own shallow egocentrism. Most of those men had died in their ungodly war. A war they had lost, and still survived. Somehow.

“Dear, sighing like this doesn’t really help soothing our worries,” a warmer voice interrupted his thoughts and John looked at Madi, reveling in her beautiful face. She still looked so young, no matter age had caught up with her like it had with them. There were wrinkles around the edges of her eyes and creases on her forehead, yet the onyx of her eyes and the fullness of her lips never ceased to enchant him. A true beauty and their queen.

“I know. But there is no logical reason for me to refuse them, other than telling them bluntly that their former captain who they think dead is very much alive.” A pained gaze hit him, like a dagger slashing open his heart. No. Captain Flint was no longer alive. John Silver had been the end of him after all. If just the rest of the world could see it like Madi and he himself did.

Steeling himself, John rearranged the crutch under his arm, arched his back slightly to stand a little straighter and made a dismissive sound with his tongue. It was too late for backing out anyway.

“Just get Miranda, move from god-forsaken Bristol and I promise when this is over, it is over. Everything. All of this.”

His voice was firm determination, trained to not let his own worries and fear show, as he had needed to do so in those long years living on a ship rather than land. Though, when James’s hand softly but firmly removed his crutch to offer a shoulder instead, and he was pulled close into his body, feeling the body heat of the only man he truly loved, while the only woman he truly loved cupped his cheeks with her hands, he knew he couldn’t fool everyone. He’d never been able to fool his family, even before he was allowed to call them that.

“As long as you come back to us, John Silver. We once thought you were dead and we truly never want to endure that thought again,” Madi spoke, but it needed James firm squeeze to make him crumble and give in to the vulnerability he so seldom showed. It wasn’t only his former crewmates that needed to believe Captain Flint was dead. The world needed to truly believe it, too, and what could be better to fool England than to give it back treasure it once claimed theirs. John Silver rather gave those gold barrens to young Jim Hawkins than to Billy fucking Bones, who thankfully was dead, if he could believe the lad.

“Let us get to bed,” James mumbled as if he saw there was no point in continuing the discussion and instead stroked patterns into John’s aching hip. “We all need our strength tomorrow.”

It was true in a way, no matter the three of them were aware that it wasn’t sleep they sought. At least not yet, no matter it was way past midnight and only moonlight lit up the large inn. Especially John wanted his loves’ bodies next to him, wanted to memorize the edgy face with green eyes framed by freckles over freckles and the dark skin of a beautiful face that held no malice. He wouldn’t see James and Madi for several weeks and he refused to think of never seeing them again at all.

“I’ll come back,” he moaned, when their worries made way for longing touches and given in needs.  
“I’ll come back,” he mumbled when both the closest people in his life were long asleep next to him.  
“I’ll come back,” he whispered in his daughter’s hair before he left the house the next morning.

* * *

Captain James Flint was dead.

In all her life, Abigail had never believed this knowledge to be so depressing, so breathtaking and maddening. After all this years of war with England, him fleeing the crown and maintaining his life as a pirate, to at least maintain any life, he now was dead. Simple as that.

Tears pricked in her eyes and she blinked the traitorous signs of compassion away. She no more was a Lady of the high society, no more noble blood, yet sympathizing with a notorious pirate was not even something a merchant’s widow could do.

Her hands trembled when she reached for her cup of tea, and she put the porcelain back to the table before she even managed to sip. She didn’t need to ruin her dress by spilling hot black tea on it. Also, what kind of expression would she give, here in an open tea-saloon in England, having some lunch with a friend, by spilling tea over the death of a pirate?

“Are you alright my dear?”

Looking up to her friend, Abigail nodded slowly, before she took a deep breath and straightened herself. She could mourn later, when she was alone with her thoughts. Now, however, she would play her role, like she was so used to.

“I was just overwhelmed, after all isn’t the world now a safer place with such a lethal man gone?” Abigail answered and her friend, her ever smiling and understanding friend, nodded. The woman had been a great pillar of comfort in time of grief, when she had lost her husband to pneumonia, but she knew nothing of her short but life-changing trip to the New World. Which was for the better.

“Of course, my dear. Yet, I imagine a man drinking himself to dead and still asking for more rum is anything but lethal. He may once was, but that time of piracy is over and gone.”

And that was the moment Abigail knew, just knew, that the man behind Captain Flint was anything but dead. Because people who claimed to know pirates and still said their time was over, had no understanding of their true reasons at all. One easily could exchange the word pirate with the word rebel and hold the same men and women, and Abigail knew the time for rebels had only just begun.

Not to mention that Captain Flint was no one to drink himself to dead. There were way more graceful ways for this man to die.

* * *

There were some things Abigail allowed herself to firmly believe, no matter what stone it may had thrown in her way. One of these things was that no matter pirate or noble, no matter woman or man, no living, breathing human was either good or bad. Most of the time those two things balanced each other out, and a strong mind and fortunate circumstances tipped the scale in favor of the goodness. She had experienced herself what happened when it did not.

Another thing she firmly believed was that your past did define your present, but it did not decide which way to go in the future. You could decide on your own if you died in regret for the past or just kept on living for what better future might come.

She also had truly believed that a man who had been robbed so much from England would never call this country his home. And still, still she was riding through the vastest countryside of fucking England to see if her information was right.

For a short moment, she allowed her eyes to close, but then her horse buckled and she quickly opened them again. Leaning forward and patting the strong horse’s neck, she managed to sooth the animal. Slowing down the pace when she saw houses appear before her, Abigail tucked a strand of her brown hair behind her ear. So this was what Captain Flint – no James Barlow – had considered suitable enough to settle down. If her information were right, of course.

Her throat clenched at the thought of what she had found out in the last few years. Ever since she had heard of Captain Flint’s obvious death, she had looked for signs of the story to be untrue. Yet, all her searching in the New World had led to the firm believe that every word of the rumor indeed had happened as it said. That Captain James Flint had died in Savannah, drinking himself to death.

Captain Flint… No matter of the many years that had passed, she still woke screaming from time to time, seeing Miranda being shot dead in her dreams. She saw her lie there, and she saw his green eyes and the silence enveloped her. Drowned her. Told her she had no right to live while her life-saver was dead.

She had dug in her father’s past, had looked through the letters he had send her, telling her about the ruthlessness of pirates and had tried to read them out of their eyes. Out of Captain Flint’s eyes. The name Alfred Hamilton had struck and so she had asked subtle question and had heard the story of James McGraw, Miranda Hamilton and poor Thomas Hamilton who had died in Bedlam due to a broken heart over the betrayal of his best friend and wife.

That it wasn’t the truth was not hard for her to see. Abigail still remembered the words Miranda had yelled, which eventually led to her death. That Peter Ashe, a former friend, had betrayed them. Them, Miranda, James and Thomas. Abigail’s own father had betrayed his friends. This was what Miranda had firmly believed.

Yet, the rumor said that Miranda and James – Captain Flint… James McGraw – had betrayed Thomas Hamilton, while her father had just done his duty. She shook her head at the swirling thoughts.

There was a betrayal, that was for sure. She just still didn’t know who had betrayed who in which way. A tear rolled down her eye, taken by the wind, when Abigail realized she always believed it was not Captain Flint and Miranda who were the ones to betray. So it only left her father… and he had burnt for it a long time ago.

What was she even here for?

* * *

With soothing voices and the right movements of her hands and legs, Abigail managed to make her horse stop in front of a neat house, with a garden framing it. The walls were made of light wood, the veranda carried a set of arm chairs, as well as a swing. Everything she saw was tidy, clean and neat, and a voice in the back of her mind became louder and louder with telling her she was definitely at the wrong place.

Before she could even consider to turn around, though, she heard some patter of feet rushing to the door. They sounded light, not like an adult walking but rather a child. It would explain the swing.

Abigail dismounted her horse, for she at least had to explain to the family – whoever they were – why she was standing in their front garden. Her heart fluttered painfully and her hand clenched around the bridle when she realized she really had no good excuse. She was not stupid enough to tell the truth. As if anyone would believe the truth at all.

“Daddy, daddy is that you?” a voice shouted and made Abigail stop in her attempts to straighten her rumpled dress. The door was yanked open and a girl of around ten years looked at her. It was heart-breaking to see her hopeful expressions fall when she realized it was not her father coming home.

For a moment, there was only guilt in her, for letting the small girl believe, and if it was just for a small amount of time, that her father had come home. Abigail remembered too painfully how it was to hope, just to be excused again. When she had been this old, her father had been at the other side of the world. Now he was dead.

Tears started to prick her eyes, but she blinked them away to have a closer look at the girl before her who was seemingly lost for words. Only now she realized that this was no typical English girl, no matter her accent sounded like it. But the caramel hue of her skin, the dark locks of her hair and her too full set of lips proved otherwise. Only her eyes shone in a bright green, reminding of the stormy ocean.

“Miranda?” another female voice shouted, and footsteps were audible again. The next moment a tall woman, graceful and elegant, no matter the simple clothing, appeared. It was obvious now why the girl wasn’t white, as her mother had a skin color as dark brown as rich chocolate. The girl was the spitting image of the woman, no matter her skin bore a lighter tone and her eyes were green instead of brown. Traits of her father, Abigail assumed.

Only then the name ran through her system, the very familiar name that haunted her not only in her sleep but in her waking time as well. It was a coincidence. A very strange coincidence but still, it must be one.

“Can I help you, Madam?” the woman said and pulled Abigail back to the present. She hadn’t realized she had stared and even now she was fixed on the two figures before her. The girl had stepped behind her mother, almost hiding from her gaze that must have been frightening by its intensity.

Where were her manners? Clearing her throat, Abigail collected her wits and lowered her head a little in an apology. “I am sorry to disrupt your day. I was searching for someone and it seems my information had been wrong.”

The horse blew its nostrils, and somehow the sound reminded her to loosen her grip on the bridle. Patting the warm body of the animal next to her, Abigail tried to swallow the lump, but it just didn’t want to go away. In fact, it became heavier with each passing second of the woman regarding her, almost coldly.

“And who, if you don’t mind me asking, is it you’re searching so far from any city? We know each other here, Madam, maybe I can help you pointing to the right direction.”

The words held nothing but an offering, yet the tone was anything but it. Those onyx eyes showed a certain kind of warning that made Abigail’s heart thrum with anxiety. She should have never come here, and leaned closer to her horse, needing the solid body close to her. A gust of wind tousled up her long brown strands.

“I am looking for a man named James,” she started and stopped suddenly, before she slowly went on. “James McGraw.”

Why, why on earth had she called him McGraw? Flint had been the first option on her tongue, almost tumbling out, for it was Captain Flint she always called him in her mind. It was the person she had come to know on their journey to Charlestown. Yet, she knew it was not the name he now went by, probably never would again, rightfully so. It held too much danger. But McGraw was also not the right name and the way the woman looked at her, Abigail realized she had made a mistake. And somehow not rode to the wrong house after all.

“I am sorry Madam, there is no such man living here,” the woman said, her tone ice-cold and hard. Yet, there was a certain paleness under the dark skin and tension was in the air. It was easy to grip, even from Abigail’s spot in the garden. It made her shudder and the anxiety only rose in her chest. Yet, she was determined to not give up easily.

“Please, madam, I am not here to do anyone harm. I just want to ta-“

The words were interrupted by another set of feet, heavier this time, and a voice, a voice she would never forget, finally filling the silence she had carried around for so long.

“Madi, what is going on? It’s not John, isn’t it?” was audible and then suddenly he was here, looking older, so much older but also younger somehow, less pained and almost at ease. His red hair shimmered in the sunlight, shorter than she remembered. The same red was in the neatly trimmed beard. He bore more scars, more wrinkles but something hard around his eyes was gone. The same green eyes that were visible in his daughter’s face.

Without her knowledge or any possible way to stop it, long held back tears started to spill over, clouding her sight. Everything blurred. The shock of her – Madi’s – eyes, the red of his – James – hair, the irritation of small Miranda’s face.

“Abigail?”

The word was a deep rumble, like thunder in the night, but it lighted up her world for just a moment. Stumbling, blindly tumbling, she moved until she fell into his arms. She could smell how his scent was a mix of sweat, soap and something earthy. Clutching his shirt tightly, she buried her face in his chest, crying and crying, finally having the feeling of being able to redeem her sins.

* * *

It was pitch black outside, only some lanterns, inside and outside the house, illuminated the night. The girl – because for Madi she would just be a girl and nothing else – was tucked into bed in their guestroom, as James had refused to let her ride back all the way on this late of an hour. Madi knew it was reasonable, as the next further city was a six-hours’ ride away, but if she was honest she would have wished for the girl to leave just like she had come.

The few words still rung in her head. The way Abigail had asked for James McGraw, a man Madi had never come to know. Not only once, because when she had met him as well as John, James McGraw had been killed by Captain Flint a long time ago. It had shocked her, shocked her to the core to realize that there was another person besides from John who had a glimpse of what James had been before he had turned into the most notorious pirate of the New World, and even John could only tell from snippets of a long-forgotten man.

She sure knew of what had happened in Charlestown, but again, all she had was stories, and it never quite matched the reality. John was a good storyteller, and therefore he knew how to leave out the worst part without making the story seemingly perforated. There was a darkness in both of them, Madi knew since the start. She had fallen in love with both – with John and James, with the darkness and the light they each carried. She didn’t regret it.

Her eyes shifted back to the figure next to her on the couch, to the man she had become to love. The freckled face seemed concentrated on the book in his lap, his one arm around her shoulders while his free hand turned a page now and then. Any other person would think he was on ease, but Madi knew better. And it left her cold from the inside out.

James was faster in reading than that, especially on a book he had read several times before. Hell, she even knew the man next to her knew several parts of the Odyssey by heart, after all they loved to quote to each other, and if it was just to drive John mad with his lack of knowledge. Their husband was a storyteller, no mere reader.

But it wasn’t only the lack of speed, that revealed James was lost in memories. He lacked any movement, any caresses he usually gave her in such a position and he had not even once offered to read to her. She missed his soothing voice and she missed the man she had come to love. Because he was not here. He was somewhere but not here.

* * *

Abigail was glad for Miranda and her natural curiosity, or else the breakfast would have gone a lot more awkwardly than it had. As truthfully as possible she answered the small girls every question, and her parents knew how to shift their daughter’s interest into the right direction to get certain questions answered they wanted to know themselves. By the end of the meal she had told them everything about her marriage with a rich but definitely not noble merchant, his death due to pneumonia and her living off the money he had left. As a woman, she wasn’t allowed to lead a business, so his brother had taken charge, and as he was a good man, also provided her a home.

When it was around midday, Miranda asked to play outside and was granted her wish. The door closed behind the girl, and there was silence in the saloon, making Abigail anxious again. With not one single word had Charlestown been mentioned.

“I should…,” Abigail started, suddenly feeling small with the two set of eyes on her, but she was interrupted by a low voice. It sounded almost from afar, even though James sat right beside her.

“Why are you here, Abigail?”

The question was long overdue, and yet she still knew no correct answer to it. Gulping and shifting in her chair, she fiddled with her dress. It was a sturdy linen, suitable for riding and didn’t even remind in the smallest of what she had worn in her former life as Lord Peter Ashe’s daughter. She had been able to mourn, yes, but she hadn’t been able to forgive.

“I heard you’re dead, from too much rum and I couldn’t believe it,” she stared, knowing every lie would rip her heart apart. It was hard to talk and her tongue felt glued to her palate, but she managed, word after word. “So I searched for the truth, and… and.”

She couldn’t say it. Couldn’t manage to go on speaking, about her father’s betrayal, about Thomas Hamilton and the rumors she couldn’t quite place. But she hadn’t had to, because her sentence was finished for her.

“…and you found the truth, I guess. We should probably move again, if it’s so easy to find us,” James continued for her slowly. It made Abigail snort, a very unladylike sound, but she didn’t care.

“Don’t bother with it. It took me three years to figure a man who was abandoned by a country could not better hide than in said country. I started in Nassau, to be honest. Sent several men of my late husband to the New World solely for gathering information. They believed I was mad.”

“And still you found us, which is impressive, I have to admit, yet you didn’t answer the question,” was cut in and Abigail shifted her gaze from James to Madi. She seemed so different than any woman she had ever met. There was a certain kind of grace in her aura that made her look more noble than any Lord or Lady.

Bowing her head, Abigail nodded, looking away. Whoever was able to stand the gaze out of those onyx eyes was a bigger person than she was. “I know. I guess I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

Something shifted in the air and when she looked back up, over the still set breakfast table, the bread and butter, the milk and tea, she was met with confusion.

“What would a woman like you need to apologize for?” James asked, and again his voice sounded strained. It was hard to read his expressions, hard to read anything at all. Gulping with a dry mouth, she started to fiddle with her dress again. She wished for an embroidery or something to occupy her hands with.

“I… my father…,” she started, but was unable to form a coherent sentence. Tears started to form, and she fought hard not to cry. “You wanted pardons, for men that would have earned pardons and my father destroyed it. He betrayed you and I am sorry. You saved my life and I destroyed yours.”

Now she really cried, hot tears streaking down her cheeks, failing the desperate attempt to not lose her face. How silly of her. How utterly weak to cry when she had nothing to cry for and they had so much.

“Abigail, I never held you accountable for what your father did,” a dark voice reached her through her haze of weakness and vulnerability. “I’m glad you managed to live your life, though. You should again.”

She looked up, met his green eyes as she blinked the blur of hot tears away. She searched for any lie in his words, but didn’t find one. He had never been one to lie.

“I try,” she breathed out with a sound that reminded of a sigh and a sob. “Do you?”

The words had slipped, just like that, because she was unable to think too much with those eyes on her. She felt the gaze of Madi, her silent observation of the conversation, ready to step in at any time should she deem it needed. But all Abigail could focus on was James, his green stormy eyes and the freckles that dotted his skin. She could understand why Miranda had loved him. Why Madi loved him.

“I have a house, a wonderful daughter, a beautiful wife and a witty husband. I don’t think I ever come closer to trying than this.”

The words made her smile, despite the unsaid truth behind them, that before this house, daughter, wife and husband he had not lived, or felt alive. And then it hit her, hit her like a bullet straight to the heart.

Miranda had assumed her father would come home the other day, no matter James was already in the house. James had asked if it was John who stood before their door, and now he claimed living considered a wife and a husband. A husband that wasn’t him.

Long John Silver had been Captain Flint’s trusted quartermaster, the only person he ever feared. Everybody knew he had been the leading figure in the war against England. Everyone knew he had been called the pirate king of the New World, until piracy had gone down. Everyone knew, and yet it seemed again, civilization knew nothing at all.

Sodomy was punishable by death and her father had always spoken in the most spiteful way of it. And… god it was so easy to replace the face of Madi with Miranda’s and the blurry image she had of John Silver with the even blurrier one she had of Thomas Hamilton. It was so easy, and answered so many questions. A sob escaped her at the thought of what her father had done, really done to this man who had saved her life.

“Abigail?”

Images still swirled in her mind when she suddenly stood up, the stool scraping over the floor.

“Abigail!”

Her knuckles turned white with her strong grip on the table, and she panted.

“I understand,” she only said, letting go of the table when she realized she was clutching it. When she realized what all of this meant. For them, for James. And the way James looked at her, she had the feeling he knew what she understood exactly, as well.

* * *

Abigail was gone, Miranda was in bed and James was again somewhere Madi had no right to follow. His body was next to hers, she could feel his warmth, but his mind was lost in memories. This time he wasn’t even pretending to read. He just gazed into a distance, or a long-suppressed past that had been awoken from Abigail’s presence.

A sigh escaped her, tired and exhausted, but it seemed to reach James, who pressed her even closer to his body. His head turned, but before he could say something – and Madi could tell he carried words on his tongue – she kissed him lightly, sealing his mouth.

When she let go, she spoke, understanding him too well to ignore it. “It’s okay, dear. I don’t know where you are and I can’t follow you to that place. But it’s obviously where you need to be right now, so it’s okay. Just remember you can always come back to me.”

She was the light, the flame, the resurrection of their relationship. Not only for John, even though it had started with him, but also for James, who needed it even more. It had always been this way, John following James down the path of the darkness to bring him back, and Madi the anchor of hope, for them to have a reason to come back. It wasn’t always the easiest part, but important nonetheless.

When James leant down and kissed her forehead, whispering a silent “Thank you” into her skin, though, she knew it was worth it.

* * *

The carriage rolled into the garden, stopping in front of the veranda. A soft expression slipped on his face, no matter the heavy rain that poured down on him, leaving him cold, drenched and probably sick in a few days. But what better place to get sick than at home? To hell with the inn, the Hispaniola, the fucking skeleton island and the treasure. To hell with piracy, mutiny and former friends that were nothing but enemies. The world knew Captain Flint was dead and John would leave him rest in peace. He didn’t need his former captain, yet he very much needed his husband, friend and lover.

“Daddy!” a voice screamed and it made John laugh a bubbling laughter. Oh, and how very much he needed his wonderful, beautiful daughter. He slipped down his seat and leaned against the carriage, to have both hands free when he opened them for Miranda to embrace him. His head buried in her hair, smelling the soap and her skin, as she slung her arms around his waist.

“You’ve grown, didn’t you sweetheart? I can tell, you’ll outgrow your poor daddy in a while,” he grumbled softly and elicited a giggle from her. It filled him with joy and his chest swelled.

“Mama said she needs to sew me new clothes in a while, because I’ve grown again. I told her that I wanted to play in the puddles, then, and she got mad,” Miranda told him and even pouted at the last words. It made John laugh, because he honestly could understand his daughter. What need to keep clothes clean that wouldn’t fit anymore in a while anyway?

“Do not say anything wrong, John Silver,” a voice sounded from the open door and onyx-like eyes looked at him amusedly. They betrayed Madi’s words in a way that softened John’s features and he ushered Miranda back into the house before she could get cold and sick, too. Reaching for his crutch, he followed her on cautious steps, to not slip in the rain. Oh, how he had needed his wife, too. His ever-understanding, wonderful wife.

“I missed you, darling,” he muttered into the kiss he gave her, careful to not wet her too much with his own clothes. She stroked his cheeks carefully, caressing every part of skin she could reach. His cheeks, his eyes, his lips and his neck.

“We missed you, too.”

Madi’s voice was low, and full of relief. Actually, he needed to tend to the horse, yet a part of him realized what, or better, who was missing. The horse could wait. “Where is James?” he asked, as something stricken rose in his chest.

“I am here.”

With those words all chains fell and John leaned back, when strong arms wrapped around him and Madi altogether. He was finally home, finally where he belonged and no matter he was drenched and the horse still stood in the rain unattended he knew those things could wait a little while longer. A sigh escaped him, when he felt lips on his neck, and on his forehead. His eyes closed, just to open again when there was a huff next to him.

“I want to cuddle with daddy, too!” Miranda demanded and it made all of them laugh. He opened his arm again and while his daughter almost jumped at him with glee, James moved to get the poor horse into the stall. He would be drenched, too, John assumed, by the time he came back in, but at least they could take a bath together, then. Let them have Madi join, too. Because that was what he had missed most. His family. A family he had fought so much to keep.


End file.
